The present invention relates to the formation of packages of hand knitting yarn and in particular to balls thereof.
It has long been the practice to package yarn for hand knitting in hanks or skeins which then had to be unpackaged by the user and rewound in balls, so that the yarn could easily be handled without knitting or ravelling. Recently, automatic machines have been developed by which balls have been directly wound and banded into packages, in which the yarn has been wound in a pattern which can easily be unthreaded and directly used by the knitter.
One such machine for fully automatic balling and banding of yarn is distributed in the United States by the G & W Maschinen AG, CH 8330 Pfaffikon, Zurich, Switzerland, under Model No. WBAN 204/305 and 205/305.
In this machine the balls are formed on a rotating, expansible arbor, by feeding the yarn on a thread flyer or guide arm which arm makes a complexedly curved swinging movement simultaneously about the arbor. The combination of rotation of the arbor and the movement of the guide cooperate to wind the yarn in an overlapping constant angular progression, substantially like a figure eight pattern. On completing the winding of a predetermined amount of yarn a substantially spherical ball is formed, after which the arbor is collapsed and the ball doffed or removed from the arbor. Thereafter a printed band is placed about the ball to complete the package. Because the ball is wound on the expanded arbor only, its doffing results in a collapse and distortion of the ball which causes difficulty in applying the banding.
It is the object of the present invention to overcome this difficulty and provide a method for winding the ball which prevents distortion of the ball when doffed, facilitates the application of the band, and produces an improved package of balled yarn.